this was my extension 2 major work.

Infinity in a Sitting




A masochistic cockroach and a lifeless paintbrush held limply in my right hand are in battle for my attention. The insect’s mahogany thorax beats ecstatically about my dim yellow surroundings, its small body possessed by the radiating dinge of an ill-fitted bulb. I would complain about the condition of the light, but it seems at this point appropriate in reinforcing my general despondence. (I hope that doesn’t sound too melodramatic.) The problem is, I’ve come to realise that optimism cannot co-exist with a disbelief in linear time. 

      I’ve always felt this way. As an example, when I was younger, certain peculiar sticks (or branches, I suppose) would fall all over my front garden, identical at their base and tip. When devastatingly bored, I became utterly absorbed in breaking them in half and switching the ends in order to create a stick that looked the same as the first. There would be only two identical parts, but I could make them draw upward, falsely, forever. Stack, stack, stack. That’s how I see my life; lived one stage to the next, sticks being stacked on an unremarkable day in summer. And I, with grubby fingers, play God.

      Closing my eyes to picture it, I’m caught by a warm darkness. Red light beats gently on my eyelids and the world is suddenly full of possibility. Mystery. I imagine the cockroach pierce my walls and fly into the moon, his or her movement finally natural, guided by a soft lunar light. I wonder if he or she will make it to the stars, or come across another cockroach and settle down up there. I wonder if he or she will be the Him or the Her. (Do cockroaches worry about gender roles?) 

      In any case, it seems the cockroach has won the battle for my attention. I open a window, bracing myself for the cold, and watch patiently for the insect to find its way out into the streetlight.  I resign myself to the fact that I might never find the inspiration or concentration to paint again, and collapse onto a meagrely elevated mattress. Fully clothed, I fall asleep and dream.

  

* * * *

      I’m in a hall of mirrors. All corners of sight throw back at me images of myself (or is it that I am simply another mirror, slipping into the semble of the surrounding hall?). There’s a red light at the end of the room, and as I walk slowly toward it the mirrors on either side of me begin to warp. The billions of light particles making up the hundreds of images scatter and reassemble to form unrecognisable creatures.

      I touch my face to feel that it is still there, unchanged, and hundreds of parodies throw their hands to their heads.

      I both create and capture this space with every second that my image is projected onto the surrounding false, shimmering doorways.

      The space is infinite. And so I am lost, denied time.

      All I can do to escape is close my eyes. There, in that redness of possibility, I find order. In that warm glimpse of wholeness, all I need to believe in a beginning and middle is an end.

* * * *

      My eyes leap open and almost fall out. Something absurd about mirrors and red.

      “Awake, Stella?” A familiar tattoo sounds at the door and I groan an assent, pulling myself up to open the door and whispering appreciation for the fact that I’m already dressed, albeit in a paint blotted shirt and track pants. “Good. It seems you artists don’t know night from day sometimes. I said I was coming around today.”

      “I remember. You know, it’s hard to tell night from day with that light,” I joke back. Red. And an ending.

      “Ah, yes. Well, you’ll be gone by tomorrow, anyway. I’ve got the paperwork and everything worked out, and your bond, of course. Here. I trust you won’t smash up the place in the next twenty-four hours?” I laugh and shake my head. “Do you know where you’re going yet?”

      “Anywhere. I just need something to inspire me.” He answers this with the near imperceptible raise of an eyebrow, reminding me that my wide-eyed notions of escaping the city lull probably seem naïve to most.

      “Hm. What is it that you paint, again?”

      “Sort of, ‘mood embellished’ landscapes, I suppose.” They’re a kind of blend between how I feel and what I see, though sometimes I wonder about the right for there to be such an accepted distinction between the two. Everyone who sees, hears, feels, tastes or smells is an artist, in a way, composing a world inside his or her head.

      “I suppose I’d better let you get back to your packing,” he says, casting an eye across the domestic debris.

      “Thanks, I’ll be around with the key tomorrow.”

      As soon as I’m alone again, crawling back to bed appears the most delightful option. But as I turn toward the bed my eye is caught by splashes of Venetian-blind-filtered sun, and I stop to look out the window. Preserving what I can in memory, I store away the scene outside: footpaths littered with delicate jacaranda flowers, casually patrolled by a host of strangers – familiar in the way that sometimes all the people I’ve never met seem to look alike;  a park beside the water, shadowed by skyscrapers; and skyscrapers shadowed by shape-shifting clouds that migrate sombrely above. Tigers, dinosaurs, mice – a menagerie of perceptions. Behind them, I can just glimpse the feint outline of the cockroach’s moon.

      My imagination greedily casts itself into a nearby building, hearing the feint panicky bleating of mobile phones and secret chatter of businesswomen huddled in bathrooms. I make sure not to overlook anything important, as though the city might disappear if I’m not here to keep watch.

      I’ll even take the billboards with me, their loud colours and even louder propositions creating a Mondrianesque colour grid across the city. At night, I’ve watched them be usurped by tiny pulsating neon islands, each floating in blackness among a million more, together creating a beautiful fluorescent-dotted outline of the world. This has always been the kind of night that I’ve known – the kind that lacks a legitimate darkness. I could believe that as soon as the sun sinks beneath the sky it is captured and funnelled into our generators, fed into sockets and beaconed outward in small, private portions. That’s what it seems like.

      Wherever I go next, at night I’ll see only the stars.

* * * *

STUPID BORING UNIVERSE.

Stack stack stack.

STUPID LONESOMENESS.

Stack stack stack.

THERE HAS TO BE SOMETHING MORE ENGAGING THAN INSUFFERABLE INFINITY.

* * * *

      I wait at the boarding gate, a page of absent-minded doodling the evidence of a tedious hour spent shifting from area to area. Graphite trees sprout out of the lined whiteness, unfurling into stars that are encircled by lines both creating and containing a wet, pupil-like moon. It gives birth to a small elfin character with ears made out of spinach and a beard bustling with tiny hummingbirds.

      My  pen always seems determined not to lose its life as soon as I lose my concentration, intent on making marks across the page for as long as possible, no matter what they happen to be. Things actually become important, when you know they won’t last. I suppose a pen can assume that human quality, by extension.

      We finally board, the destination: Arkaroola. In the left pocket of my denim jacket is a three-page flyer boasting pictures of brilliant red dirt and mountains that look as though they’ve only just emerged from the chaos of creation, scarred and raw. In the right is a torn out newspaper classified, advertising an assistant position at the Arkaroola observatory. Full time. Residence offered. Training provided. The job is absolutely perfect.

      We take off. I once had a friend who told me he’d love me forever if I taught him to fly. I think of him now, watching my knees climb above the clouds. I like that the clouds can become so many shapes, simply through the recycling of ice particles. They seem somehow timeless, in that way. Time makes no difference to imagination either; I can look out of the small plane window and imagine that we’re not even soaring through air but through earth, through the mountains that might have existed here before wind and rain rendered them sky.

      I consider attempting to draw the flight, however I can capture neither the impressions of the landscape outside nor the expressions of my fellow passengers within, so I resign to a quiet watch, as though the entire scene is being constructed for my benefit. It’s interesting, the things people will come up with to occupy themselves. Three children behind me chorus lines from popular movies, as an increasingly irritated woman to my far right taps her nails against a pile of paper, causing the man next to her to put in his earphones. All five of them begin to transform into lizards before I even realise that I’m daydreaming.

      The plane becomes a kind of Odeon, red warmth beaming in from a billion windows, indistinguishable from one another in the brilliant light. The surroundings are so gorgeous that they are fit only for a divine daydream, so as I talk to myself, I imagine that a cosmic Stella replies. She speaks with the more sonorous voice of our elaborate internal duologue.

WELL, WELL.

I have no purpose for visiting.

I THOUGHT I WAS VISITING YOU.

Oh. Well, I suppose it’s possible that we’re visiting each other. Only, you’re here in my plane. These lizards you see are my fellow passengers.

YES. I THOUGHT THEY WERE QUEER LOOKING HUMANS. THEY DON’T TALK MUCH, DO THEY?

Not on planes, no.

HMM. FOOLISHLY ABASHẾD FOLK, YOURS.

They did what?

WHAT?

Nothing. So.

SO.

So… What is omnipotence like?

OH, NOT SO GREAT AS YOU MIGHT THINK. DULL, IF ONE DOESN’T KNOW HOW TO ENTERTAIN ONESELF.

And infinity?

WELL! I DON’T KNOW IF I QUITE BELIEVE IN THAT. WE ALL DIE, FROM TIME TO TIME.

Time to time?

YOUR DESTINY IS NIGH.

What?

YOU LAND!

      We begin our descent and the lizards begin to transform into humans before I even realise that I’ve returned to consciousness. As we land, I see a cloud of dust break the horizon, the bumping approach of a bulky white four-wheel drive seeming almost a parody of civilisation. I unload my luggage, the zippers and I both groaning with the weight as I gratefully move toward the vehicle. The engine continues to run while a chap greets me and hoists my bags into the back with embarrassing ease.

      “Stella, isn’t it? How are ya?”

      “Not bad. A bit tired. How are you?”

      “All right. I’m Tom, by the way.”

      “Hello Tom,” I say with a grin, climbing aboard for the final leg of the trip. The hills move up and down beside us, following like a carousel as the road rises and falls. All there is in sight are rocks and trees, sun, earth, sky… The earth is so red and the sky is so blue it’s like something out of a dream.

      “It must be amazing to live here.”

      “Yeah, it’s not half bad. I can imagine you might be a bit overwhelmed, the bloke back at the observatory mentioned you’re an artist,” Tom says, offering me a piece of lemon slice. “I did some painting once upon a time as well. Just watercolours. Nice to be able to lose yourself in it, eh?”

* * * *

      A fire plays in front of me, the air is still, and darkness begins to creep over. Without the clatter of lights to interrupt, night falls here so heavily that were it not an abstract concept, it would almost certainly break a leg. The stars turn on one by one, until each corner of the sky is covered; constellation upon constellation of them, like nerve endings twinkling beautiful messages to each other. Someone once told me that the sky looked black at night because we aren’t able to understand anything outside our own atmosphere. We can’t even wonder as to what might be out there, because of course, if you could then you could conceive it, and so see it. It made me wonder at the time, and it makes me wonder now. Of course, it portends all kinds of confusing existential quandaries, but mostly I am delighted to act witness to the complete history of my own, single reality. I will never get to experience the entire history of anything else.

      The “bloke back at the observatory”, or Matthew, as he would probably prefer to be introduced, sits across from me. He seems a calm, quiet sort of a man, and so offers me a calm, quiet smile each time our eyes meet or something is said. Occasionally the glances seem slightly more inquiring, as though he’s puzzling about something, but I put it down to a polite initial awkwardness.

      We talk about the weather and the tourists and the details of my assistant position. It is a rather peculiar arrangement I’ll admit, more than it sounded in the ad or on the phone, particularly as the fellow seems to be completely able bodied. The kind of tasks I had in mind, like fetching tea and cleaning instruments, taking telescope co-ordinates and such, seem increasingly unlikely. We sit huddled around the fire, watching embers jump at the sky. I’m slightly jumpy as well, partly in trepidation of the now invisible mosquitoes, dancing their jagged waltz around my blood-filled head, but mostly out of excitement: I’ve been promised that I’ll look through the telescope tonight.

      “I don’t usually take people on to stay, you know, only this is a bit of a unique time, coming up. I actually…” Matthew paused. “I’m sure the details can wait until you’ve seen the observatory.”

      He seems more confident as we wander the building, pointing out one thing after another and allowing each a short sentence or two describing its function or significance. The performance is frequently interrupted by the kind of inquisitive pauses that elicit a nod or hum of agreement. There are charts up on most of the walls, illustrating the movements of the planets or the structure of spacecrafts. They are obviously meant for tourist interest; however, Matthew tells me that the tours have been stopped for about a month, due to plans for renovation. I wonder if he wants me to strip the walls while I’m here, or something, so I begin examining the paintwork. I’m so absorbed I barely realise that I’ve walked a flight of stairs, and now stand facing the telescope in its perpetual watch, peering upward like a gigantic, intrusive eye. The telescope itself reminds me of the first kaleidoscope I ever owned, though sorely lacking jewelled adornments and a playschool trademark.

      “What would you like to see? I can show you anything, except all of it at once.” Matthew doesn’t look up for my response as he frowns into the telescope.

      “A dead star,” I say after some thought, hoping I haven’t requested something idiotic. He locates a particular piece of sky with meticulous intuition.

      “All stars have a life. As soon as they finish a period as one thing, they float around space as something else. Death is perhaps the most beautiful stage that a star undergoes – this is a nebula.” He beckons me over to look. “But where this star dies, the explosion of its molecules will form the birthplace of another star.”

      “Hmm.”

      “Oh, sorry, I’m in tour mode. Sorry.”

      “No, no, I’m interested to hear it. Give me the spiel,” I say, grinning.

      “Well. Take a normal star, like our sun. It is currently burning a core of hydrogen into helium, but when that hydrogen is exhausted the helium core begins to contract, and the outer layers expand and cool, glowing redder. It then becomes what we call – I don’t know how much of this you know – what we call a Red Giant, which is able to fuse helium into heavier elements. When there is no longer enough energy to fight gravity, the core collapses and sends a shockwave outwards and the star's outer layers are cast off in a planetary nebula. And then, like I said, the remnants of this star will be recycled into the next generation of stars. Even we are made up of the molecules that were once burned in stars. Of course, we’re all made up of the matter in the big bang, anyway.” I gaze into the nebula a while longer, overwhelmed at the thought that I’m seeing the real thing.

      “There’s something else I want to show you. This star has been acting strangely. It’s now the brightest star in the sky, if you want to make a wish on it.”

      People always seem to make realistic wishes that have a good chance of coming true, so that if they do, even if only out of some coincidence, there remains the mysterious possibility that something magical is at work. I decide to exercise my pompous scepticism and wish that I might see the end of the world. Not experience it, just know what it would be like. I suppose it’s like the temptation to read the last page of a book, and then go back to find out how it all happens.

      “I read something lately,” I begin, “about the big bang. About a theory that the universe was born inside a dying star. But then, where did that star come from?”

      “It does make you think. Science is always laughing at things that rely on their own logic, like religion. I don’t know if you’ve read ‘A Brief History of Time’ – in the introduction Hawking talks about a woman who gets up after listening to a scientist talk about the rotation of the planets, and says, ‘that’s all nonsense,’ or something like that, ‘the world is really a flat plate, supported by a giant turtle.’ When the scientist asks what the turtle is standing on, she answers, ‘you’re very clever, but it’s turtles all the way down.’ And, try as we might, we can never come up with a solution to our universe’s origin that is any better. Not a scientific one.” Matthew yawns. “Hm, it’s getting rather late. I’m going to get to bed. Would you like a hot water bottle?”

* * * *

      Morning. Through reluctant eyelids I glimpse my easel, upright and boasting half a painting.

      So, I’ve started painting in my sleep.

      Now wide awake I stare across the small room at what looks like a half finished picture of a star exploding, similar to, if a little more violent than, the slow, outward echoing nebula that I saw last night. It’s not such a bad painting so far, really. Stylistically it looks like any of my other works, however I’ve painted a figure into the foreground, which is something I usually avoid. She is a tall, geeky looking brunette with terrible posture, and holds a paintbrush up to the sky. Presumably the figure is me.

      As I walk forward to inspect the work more closely, I discover the most confusing thing about it yet; on the back of the painting I have written “The End of the World”.

      God, what a wasted wish.

      I put concern for the painting away as my head is swamped with the familiar guilt that I’ve slept in half the day, and mosey into the kitchen. To my delight, as I enter I witness the hour hand only just strike eight. I can hear through the cheery whistling and bustling noises emerging from the kitchen that Matthew is already up, and I can smell that he’s made us breakfast.

      “Good morning. Tea and toast for us – oh, I hope you don’t mind drinking normal milk?” He shoots me a worried look.

      “No, no, not at all. Don’t worry about that. Thank you for making breakfast.” After some hesitation I add, “I’ve always thought that drinking fat free milk is the closest anyone gets to living a lie in a postmodern age.” He gives a chuckle.

      “I think it’s silly, too.” We mull happily over our common outlook for a moment or two, before both silently finishing breakfast.

      Matthew has decided that, it being a Saturday, I should be given a tour of the surrounding environment.

      “This is the highest point in the park,” he announces loudly, as the car shudders to a halt.

      I open the door to find myself metres from the edge of a cliff. As I look out, I become disoriented by the recurring patterns of wildlife. The elements circle me like images in a kaleidoscope, the same forms repeating again and again in endless combinations. I used to sit, twisting nobs and watching the endlessly transforming patterns for hours, until my eye would finally let my brain forget that the entire spectacle is made by five beads in a plastic tube. Here, they are sight, taste, smell, sound and touch. I am just as lost in their infinite combinations.

      “Why did you decide to come out here? It can’t have just been the job.”

      “It’ll sound stupid.” He looks at me encouragingly, so I attempt to explain. “Well, partly I just wanted to be in a different environment for a while, but also, I keep having these dreams. I never remember much of them, colour – red, mostly – but they always end really abruptly. It’s hard to piece together. Anyway, I needed inspiration, and I guess I just took the dreams to be telling me where I needed to be – a warm, red place. And I wanted to see the stars. Why did you come out here?”

      “For similar reasons, in a way. My wife and I moved out here about ten years ago, so that we could watch the stars again. My wife passed away only last year.”

      “I’m sorry to hear.”

      He gives a small smile. Sometimes allowing yourself be taken in by someone else’s story will momentarily dispel a weary solipsism. I used to wonder why it was so impossible to see or understand other people properly, until I figured it would be like two eyes in the same head trying to look at each other. We are far too connected; we would simply see ourselves, staring back. It’s like trying to get an image of your self in a dream, or placing two mirrors to face each other. All that appears is the illusion of eternity, the same image projected infinitely onto smaller and smaller versions of an original that disappears in the fury of simulation. We’re one: one understanding, manifest in endless combinations. Stacking in mid-air.

      I find myself inspired enough to try painting for the first (conscious) time, leaving Matthew to sit and read on the only rock within sight that doesn’t gleam with bloodlust. Within fifteen minutes, my page is alive with colour, my hand darting from hue to hue as though in a conspiracy against realism. I’ve never seen mountains like the ones creeping in at my edge of sight, such a queer blue, as though numbed with the distance. They contrast with the immediate vibrancy of the orange hills, softly dotted with green spinifex. There is such a power about the landscape; it soars so dramatically upward and plunges so entirely into the depths of the place that it drags the surrounding environment with it – rocks crush trees and millennially slow tectonic movements contort small caves into the shapes of quiet gasps.

      I feel giddy; the landscape here is like being inside the mind of a teenager.

* * * *

FOOLISH, TOILING BEINGS. THEY MUST REACH A HEIGHT OF ACTION!

Stack. Stack. Stack.

l l l l

      On the second day of my stay, I wake to find a second corner of the canvas filled with colour. Dramatic, sweeping brushstrokes draw my eye in a semicircle across what exists of the painting so far, spears of light meshing earth and sky, tying them back together. I don’t know if it’s proper to admire or feel proud of a work created with the conscious mind absent, but whatever the case, I enjoy looking at it. I don’t indulge for too long, because I’ve decided to make scrambled eggs with normal milk for Matthew and me.

      “Thank you for breakfast, Stella, it’s very good.”

      “My pleasure.”

      “Are you enjoying your stay?”

      “Yes. I think it was certainly an inspired move to come out here.” I give a small laugh. “I even paint in my sleep!”

      “What?”

      “I did half a painting in my sleep last night. This is the second night in a row that it’s happened.”

      “Really?”

      “Mm, it looks like a star exploding. Or what I think a star exploding would look like. Also, on the back I’ve written ‘The End of the World’.” I grin as though it is the most ridiculous thing in the world. Matthew stands over the sink having just cleared the plates. Unexpectedly, he looks more concerned than amused. Finally looking away, he moves toward the doorway.

      “I don’t think this can wait any longer,” he says ominously, almost to himself. “I’d like you to see something. It’s part of why you’re here, I’m sure.”

      In the adjacent room, Mathew moves toward an unassuming cabinet and pulls open the top drawer, revealing another map of the sky and a tattered pink book of names. I notice both but note neither, presuming it would seem rude.

      “Are you curious about the book?” Now I suppose it would be rude not to take an interest.

      “Why do you keep it here, separate like that?”

     

      Matthew begins by telling me that before working at the observatory, he made a very respectable living making projections on the stock market. There was a certain amount of mathematics involved, however more significant was the use of simple intuition, which eventually came so easily to Matthew that people began to treat him with suspicion. Work became steadily more unpleasant, and, searching desperately for a different world to escape into, he came across his pregnant sister Alice’s copy of ‘Name Your Baby’ by Angela Peterson. At first it was an occasional event, however soon became a veritable pastime, Matthew relishing the activity with creative delight. He would pore over the potential people listed down every page, creating identities and universes for the individuals they might become. Before long, Matthew began writing the particularly interesting ones down, scribbling traits, dates and a short sharp personality beside each.

      “I became a bit unnerved though,” he continued, “because as my friends started having children, just like asking me what company they should invest in, they, knowing about my peculiar hobby, started asking what name they should give their child. I obliged, thinking that my outlet might serve some novel purpose. However, within two years, people began to realise that these children were growing up to be the figures I had described. See, here,” he flicked to a random page, “John. My cousin named his second son John, because I’d written that a John born in 1981 would be a keen insect catcher. The fellow can catch them with his eyes closed. Oh! And here, Jodi. My neighbours – Tony and Ellen were their names – similarly decided to consult me about their child. They wanted to name her Jodi. Well, I told them that my pencilled girl of that name, coincidentally born in the year of theirs, would have a harelip and maintain an unhealthy fascination with buckets. They wouldn’t listen.”

      “And were you right?”

      “Yes! About every single one. But you see, I didn’t think much of it at the time. I didn’t care if people thought I was a lunatic, or if they wanted to believe that I spoke in nothing but vatic revelations of truth. It didn’t bother me, until you rang up about the assistant position.”

      “What?”

      “Well. I think you’re one of these children. Born in 1984, you said on the phone, an artist.”

      “Is that what you have written?”

      “Yes, but not only that, Stella. You see, for a while I’ve been wondering what all these coincidences mean. I mean, it’s like something out of fiction, right? That’s what I thought. And the more I think about it, the more it makes sense.”

      “What do you mean?”

      “I mean everything seems to be leading up to a point. Metaphors abound. And now it all seems to be coming together as one – God help us, we’re probably in something that could be read in a sitting. Sorry, I’m getting off track. Read, read what I wrote next to your name.” He holds out the book to me, the S of my name worn almost completely away through the number of times it has encountered a thumb.

STELLA: Latin. Meaning ‘star’. Also, ripe for discovery.

Pencilled in: Painting Stella the star will mean the end of the world.

      As soon as he sees my eyes lift from the page, Matthew takes the sky map out of the drawer. Without a glance toward where he is pointing, Matthew’s finger lands on a small, dandelion-like constellation, one star at the centre.

      “This is a star named Stella. I’ve been watching it for years – since you were born, almost. It’s been getting brighter and brighter by the day. That is the star you wished on last night. I was about to tell you then, but I knew you would have a hard time believing me. When you mentioned the painting though, I couldn’t leave it any longer. The thing is that the death of this star will end life as you, we, know it.”

      “How?”

      “Because this star is you.”

      “I don’t understand. Are you saying this is a metaphor, or that it isn’t?”

      “It is. You know that I am a man of science, but I don’t think that the things that are happening to us can be looked at like that anymore. Just think about it, before you call me crazy.” I’m stunned. End of the world?

      “But Matthew, people have been predicting the end of the earth since the dawn of time. They haven’t been right yet.” The last word, yet, rings irrationally in the space around us. I don’t understand why he’s so eager to believe something so mad, speculatively plausible or not. Matthew is right, what he is saying sounds like something out of one of those science-fiction novels I used to read. Though a terrible one, where the author has no idea where he or she is going with her characters, nor the little world constructed around them, and so decides to get rid of everything by exploding the universe. Giving the world a final, if a little over the top, order. Ridiculous.

      “I can’t be certain, of course. I’m just trying to put it together. Like pieces of a puzzle,” Matthew offers, gauging that I am finding the entire thing beyond belief. 

      “No more metaphors!”

      “That was a simile.” His attempt at making light of things.

      “I don’t care. No more tropes of any kind, for at least ten minutes. I just want to think clearly.”

      “Okay. I’m going to check the telescope.”

     

      I know he’s making an excuse to leave, but I’m glad of the space. I decide that a walk might help clear my head, and start toward the nearest mountain.

      I reach the summit without breath, however it is worth the effort, as from the here I’m able to look back at my travels, and realise the beauty that I have so unwittingly been blundering through. I remember the outlines of the surrounding landscape from a distant dream, in which I found myself screaming, “Deliver me!” into a pulsating, blood red sky. It’s the kind of melodramatic thing one does, as the star of one’s own existence. I had always quite enjoyed just watching the world as though it revolved around me. However, now there’s the possibility of that very fact meaning I’ve condemned it to a fiery death.

      The problem is that although I think the whole thing ridiculous, it’s hardly more preposterous than any of the fantastic escapes or Armageddons that unfold in my dreams. I dream about endings, and all my life I’ve studied theories on beginnings, when really we’re lost in a tumble of experience that provides no certainty for either. Caught in a story that won’t mean anything until we can see how many pages there are until the end.

      It all runs through my head at a million miles per second. A month ago, I was bored and seeking escape, yet here I am faced with the prospect that instead of waking up tomorrow to a cup of tea and a light chat before a bracing bushwalk up a cliff, I mightn’t wake up at all. Looking out at the landscape now, all that seems to have occurred is the rapid disintegration of an illusion, of my life. The kaleidoscope’s secret compartments are coming unscrewed; the same things rattle around and around, images reassembling anew depending upon the combination. Like stars, we are bound to a kind of cycle, exploding and condensing, taking and recreating, providing creation upon creation, life upon life. I should be angry. I should be pessimistic, but I’m not. Someday a few infinitesimal physical or spiritual or metaphorical or whatever atoms that make up me will get locked in someone’s understanding, stuck like dust in a vacuum cleaner, and will come together again in some other creation. Maybe yours. Maybe you’ll be its God.

WHAT’S THIS? HERESY?

No, no. Just introspection. It’s crisis point, you see.

ANOTHER GOD, EH.

Well, theoretically. Have you read any –

READ! READ, WITH WHICH EYES? MY ALL-SEEING ONES?

Oh. Yes, that’s right, you know everything. Well, I just think it's interesting. The world is about to end, and in all my dreams the world ends –

HMM, I DREAM ABOUT EVERYTHING BEING BLOWN UP, AS WELL. INFINITY IS SO… INFINITE.

Do you think dreams, and metaphors, have feelings?

NO. I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO THINK ABOUT MY DREAMS, HOW REAL THEY ARE OR WHAT THEY MEAN. YOU’RE NOT GOING TO DO SOME KIND OF FREUDIAN PSYCHOANALYSIS ON ME, I HOPE.

Sublimated urges to –

STOP THAT! I’VE HAD ENOUGH.

Are you going to throw a lightning bolt at me?

HA! THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT YOU’D EXPECT, ISN’T IT. WELL, YOU DON’T DESERVE THE EFFORT. ARE YOU GOING TO ASK FOR ABSOLUTION, OR ANYTHING?

Resolution is more important, here.

ALL RIGHT.

      I descend the mountain, resolved to patch up things with Matthew, and let what will be, be. No matter what that might entail. Nor what mysterious things beyond my comprehension might be at work. Or play. As I enter through the kitchen, I notice Matthew sitting at the bench, his whole form possessed by quiet.

      “‘It will be fine.’ Do you think if I think that, then it will be?”

      “Yes.”

      “Then it will be. The star will die right on cue, and it will be beautiful. And we will disappear to somewhere else.”

      “I hope it’s Canada.” I laugh at the absurdity of the statement, which, judging by his smile, was the intention.

      “Matthew. To be serious for a moment, what actually happens now?” He looks at me, and pauses, before becoming very solemn.

      “The world is yours. But it’s ending.” The sky outside rages a miraculous warm red. It’s like the red you see when you close your eyes, the red of warmth and possibility. Mystery. It’s like the sum of all the sunsets that I’ve ever watched in my life, and yet the spectacle is coming apart at the seams, as the entire world bleeds into one. I recognise three quarters of it from my painting, though I realise that I don’t need paint to compose order any more, when in fact my entire life has been a canvas.

      “It was nice, wasn’t it?”

      “Yes, very. Though don’t feel too upset. To say thatthis world is about to end, would be more correct than saying the world. And, we’re going out with a bang, but of course, the universe began in the same way–”

      “Don’t get philosophical with me.”

      “Oh, all right. Should we tell anyone else?”

      “No. Dreams don’t have feelings.”

* * * *

The End